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THE PERSIA SOCIETY, 
22, Albemarle St., 
London, W. 



Persian Autonomy. 


The Right Hon. 

The Earl Curzon of Kedlestqn. 


Published for the Society 
by 

JOHN HOGG, 

13, Paternoster Row, London, 


Copyright . 


Collected *1. 


Price Sixpence Net 














• A ^uxl 

THE PERSIA SOCIETY. 


HON. PRESIDENT. 

HIS EXCELLENCY THE PERSIAN MINISTER, 
MIRZA MEHDI KHAN MUSHIR-UL-MULK. 

HON. VICE-PRESIDENTS. 

THE COUNCILLOR OF LEGATION. 

MIRZA ABDUL GHAFFAR KHAN. 

THE CONSUL GENERAL FOR PERSIA. 

THE PERSIAN CONSUL IN LONDON. 

PRESIDENT. 

RT. HON. LORD LAMINGTON, G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E, 


COUNCIL. 

THE HON. PRESIDENT AND THE HON. VICE-PRESIDENTS. 
THE PRESIDENT. 

sir thomas Barclay {Chairman). 

RT. HON. SYED AMEER ALI, P.C. 
PROFESSOR E. G. BROWNE, M.A., M.B., F.B.A., F.R.C.P. 
W. A. BUCHANAN, ESQ. 

GENERAL SIR T. E. GORDON, K.C.B., K.C.I.E., C.S.I. 
SIR C. J. LYALL, K.C.S.I. 

H. F. B. LYNCH, ESQ., M.A. 

RT. HON. SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, BART. 

HON. TREASURER ! ERIC MACLEOD MITCHELL, ESQ. 

HON. SECRETARY : GODFREY J. HOGG, ESQ., 

22, Albemarle Street, London, W. 



2~ 









PERSIAN AUTONOMY. 


SPEECH DELIVERED BY 

The Rt. Hon. The Earl Curzon of Kedleston, 

G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E., P.C., 

AT THE 

INAUGURAL DINNER OF THE PERSIA SOCIETY, 

AT THE 

SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON, on 15TH NOVEMBER, 1911. 


Replying to the toast of “ The Guests/’ proposed 
by the Right Honourable Syed Ameer Ali : 

Earl Curzon of Kedleston said : I am par¬ 
ticularly glad to reply to a toast which has been 
proposed by Mr. Ameer Ali. I had the honour of being 
a colleague of his for some years in India, and I share 
the gratification of his friends that since his return to 
this country he has been promoted to high judicial 
office—an office which he eminently adorns. He 
has on all suitable occasions shown himself a wise, 
moderate, and judicious exponent of the best Mussul¬ 
man opinion of our day (cheers). It is many years 
since I made those journeys in Persia which eventuated 
in the book to which reference has been made. 
Twenty-two years ago in this very month I was in 
that country. For nearly a quarter of a century since 
I have been engaged in public life, both in India and 
here ; but I can assure you that even at this distance 
of time every incident of my Persian travels—the long 
rides across the desert, the sight of the villages, cities, 
and towns, the memory of famous ruins, the relics 
of past civilisations, the interviews with notables and 
grandees, the glimpses I caught of the life of the 




4 


people—all these things are so fresh in my mind 
that I can scarcely believe that they did not occur 
yesterday. I really believe that if I were told now 
to sit down and write afresh the record of my 
experiences in that visit, and I had to do so in a room 
without notes or books of reference, I could set down 
my impressions with an accuracy to which travellers 
seldom attain. But that was not my only experience 
of Persia. After spending three years in close company 
with Persian writers, historians, poets, artists, states¬ 
men, and kings, while I was engaged upon my book, 
I became saturated and permeated with the influence 
of Persia. Although the occupations of my life have 
taken me far away since then, though I am now in 
the agreeable position of a politician out of office— 
a thing which I do not in the least deplore (laughter) 
—yet there still lingers in me the residue of that 
former influence. I am far from suggesting that my 
experience has been at all unique in this respect. My 
knowledge of Persia is not to be compared with that of 
many gentlemen sitting at these tables. But I believe 
there is no man who has been any length of time 
in Persia, whether as a traveller or explorer, as a 
diplomat, or Consul, or missionary, or merchant, upon 
whom the country does not leave an impression 
that time does but accentuate rather than remove; 
none who can shake himself free of the fascination 
which it has laid upon him ; none who is not ready 
to the best of his ability anywhere and in any capacity 
to render service to the country which has placed 
such a grip upon his imagination (cheers). 

It is to the existence of a body of enthusiastic 
persons thus moved by Persia that this Society owes 
its origin. It is their object to emphasise the interest 
which acquaintance with Persia has created in them, 
and to create it in those in whom it does not already 
exist. One of the functions of the Society is to provoke 
sympathy with Persia. Sympathy offered by one 
nation to another is a gift which it is easy to deride. 


5 


It is easily described as a cheap gift which involves no 
sacrifice to the donor and confers little benefit on the 
nation upon whom it is bestowed. That is a wholly 
erroneous view. Sympathy is the greatest gift short 
of material assistance (which may, in the circumstances, 
be impossible) that one nation can give to another. 
Sympathy means the effort and desire to understand 
another nation from that nation’s point of view, to 
sympathise with its aspirations and ideals even when 
the horizon is most covered with clouds (cheers). 
It is a good thing that a society should exist capable 
of reminding this country that Persia has had a great 
and glorious past, that it has charmed humanity by the 
grace of its poets, by the beauty of its arts, by the 
teaching of its philosophers, that it has produced great 
statesmen and rulers, and that it is still capable, if 
favourable circumstances are guaranteed to it (loud 
cheers) of reproducing in the future some of those 
characteristics which have made it not merely romantic 
but famous in the past. 

In one respect our interest in Persia is specially 
warm—that is in its survival as a nation * (cheers). 
If there is one lesson which the contemplation of the 
history of Persia leaves in our minds it is the strong 
existence in olden as in modern times of a national 
spirit there. That spirit may have been crushed by 
long years of misgovernment; it may have been 
enslaved by the domination of an alien rule ; it may 
even now be handicapped by the ignorance and in¬ 
experience of the people. It is, perhaps, somewhat 
incoherent in its expression, and ineffective in its acts. 
But it is there. The great thing is that it is there, 
and that the best minds and thoughts in Persia are 
slowly working their way through all this welter of 
chaos and trouble towards the realisation of a national 
government, independent and autonomous (cheers). 
It may be said that the Parliament of Persia is in¬ 
experienced ; that its statesmen are uninstructed; that 
the difficulties are overwhelming. All this to some 


6 


extent is true, but I believe the people are loyal to the 
new regime, and I draw that inference from the resist¬ 
ance which they offered a short time ago to the effort 
to impose upon them the tyranny from which they 
had recently emancipated themselves, and the com¬ 
parative ease with which that attempt was defeated. 
If, as I hold, this national spirit exists in Persia it is 
for you and me as Englishmen to sympathise with and 
encourage it by every means in our power (loud 
applause). 

In his excellent speech Professor Browne told us 
that this Society is non-political, and he alluded to his 
own experiences in Persia in skirting the edge of the 
Great Kavir. I am well aware that I am skirting the 
edge of a political Kavir (a laugh), but not being a 
member of the Society I am not bound by the pre¬ 
scriptions which I understand control and curb the 
orations to which we have so far listened. Being a 
politician, and moreover a politician out of office, I 
am at liberty to look at matters through political 
spectacles. I take it that your refusal to allow politics 
to intervene in your Society merely signifies that you 
are not going to identify yourselves in anything you 
say or do with one party as against another (hear, 
hear). But I venture to submit that it is perfectly 
childish to assemble 200 people here and ask them to 
consider the present position of Persia and then expect 
them to act and speak as if there was no political 
aspect to be dealt with, or problem to be solved 
(cheers). I desire to say nothing that may cause 
offence in the present situation, which I am quite 
aware is a troubled one. There is much insecurity in 
Persia, there is difficulty in collecting revenue, there is 
sporadic warfare between clans and tribes, and the 
rulers are unable in parts to make their authority 
felt. But admitting all this, I want you to realise the 
extraordinary difficulties of the position in which the 
Persian Government has been placed (cheers). Look at 
what they have had to do. After centuries of misrule 


7 


(in many portions of the time it amounted to little less) 
the Persian Government decided without experience, 
almost without premeditation, to embark upon the 
great experiment of self-government by representative 
institutions. Parliamentary government, if I may use 
a medical metaphor, is a strong and heady physic in 
any country, even in Western countries, and it requires 
the sturdiest frame, the most robust constitution in 
order to assimilate it. Moreover it is apt, in the process 
of assimilation, to cause, at any rate, minor disorders 
which for the time produce a derangement of the 
system. Are you to believe that that which we with 
difficulty compassed after centuries of struggle, an 
Oriental race, without experience, with traditions 
wholly different from our own, is successfully to 
achieve in five, ten, or twenty years ? I feel most 
deeply for the position in which the Persian Government 
has been placed. In the first place they had to get rid 
of a regime of which they disapproved ; then they had 
to create a Government themselves. It is not possible 
in a moment to train up statesmen for such a respon¬ 
sible task. No sooner are they launched on their 
way than they are plunged into civil war, and no 
sooner have they successfully escaped from civil war 
than, if what we read is correct, they are confronted 
with an ultimatum (cheers). 

I desire to say nothing whatever about the 
circumstances which have brought this state of 
affairs about. If I did so. I should be trenching 
illegitimately upon the sphere of politics. It may 
very well be that the Persian statesmen in their 
handling of these affairs have not always been 
judicious or wise. They may have been over-sensitive 
or over-suspicious. But neither am I certain that 
the diplomacy of those Powers with whom they have 
had to deal has been altogether wise (cheers). I am 
not clear that European diplomacy in connection 
with Persia in recent years has been a model of states¬ 
manship (cheers). It may be that, not in one 


8 

quarter alone, but in more than one, mistakes have 
been made. 

No one realises more clearly than I do that it is 
for Persian statesmen and Persian Ministers to work 
out their own salvation. They know the circumstances 
of their own country, and they do not want gratuitous 
advice from us. Still I may be permitted to put 
myself in their place and to say that if I were a Persian 
statesman—which in the present circumstances God 
forbid! (laughter and hear, hear)—I would speak 
to myself in the following terms at the present 
juncture. “ The first condition which my country 
wants is tranquility and confidence.” Now that form 
of security can only be obtained by the possession by 
the Government of an organised and disciplined force, 
acting under the control of the Government, and capable 
of carrying out its orders. I would further say, “ Such 
a state of affairs can only be secured with the aid of 
those who are competent and trained to discipline the 
force, and, still more, by the security of regular pay.” 
That brings us to the financial question, and for my 
part I witness with the warmest sympathy the efforts 
now being made by the Persian Government to re¬ 
organise their finances (cheers). Further, if I were 
the Persian statesman whom I have imagined, I would 
not hesitate for a moment, if the present resources of 
my country were inadequate, to obtain financial assis¬ 
tance, upon suitable conditions, elsewhere. I would 
not mind in the least going abroad for financial help, for 
guidance, for experience, for anything that might be 
useful to my country short of control. All that I would 
demand in pursuing this policy would be that any 
assistance I might receive should be absolutely dis¬ 
interested in character, and that neither now nor in 
the future should it be directed in the smallest degree 
against the independence of my country (loud 
cheers). I believe that if Persian statesmen found it 
in their power after pursuing such a policy to present 
to the world what may be described, in another medical 


9 


metaphor, as a clean bill of health, within say two years 
from now, the sympathy not of ourselves only, who are 
old and traditional friends of Persia, but of the whole 
civilised world would rally to their aid, and nothing 
but the most hearty support would be received from 
those great Powers whose possessions are contiguous 
to those of Persia (cheers). 

I cannot speak for the Government of this country, 
because I have no connection with it, and have no 
idea of what may be its views. But I have some 
right to speak for the average citizen of this country, 
and although he may not be very well informed about 
Persia, or other Oriental countries, he still has at the 
bottom of his heart a sincere and cordial sympathy with 
that race. On his behalf I wish to say that if it is 
anywhere stated—as I have sometimes seen it stated 
—that there is any hostility in this country to the 
regeneration of Persia, that we have the faintest interest 
in promoting or fomenting disorder with a view to 
extracting advantage from it ourselves, or that it is 
with the smallest pleasure that any British Government 
can contemplate the exercise of force for the protection 
of its own interests in that country, such is indeed a most 
misguided and mistaken belief (cheers). The British 
people, and I think in this respect I can speak for the 
British Government as well, have only one interest in 
Persia at the present time, and that is the establishment 
there of a firm and respected Government responding 
to the national spirit of the people. The first British 
interest in Persia is a strong Persian Government. 
Even if you look at the matter from the narrow and 
selfish point of view it is so. For the safeguarding of 
our trade, for the protection of our subjects, for the 
peace of our borders, it is essential that there should be 
a strong Government at headquarters. And if this is 
necessary for us, how much more so for the Persians 
themselves, in order to provide a core and centre 
round which the best spirits of the country can gather, 
attracting to itself the finest intellects and most 


10 


patriotic characters among the Persian people, and 
exhibiting a firm front to the outsider. Therefore, 
the constitution of a strong, united, national Govern¬ 
ment in Persia is the one thing above all others that 
Englishmen desire (cheers). 

There is one other respect in which Persia appeals 
to our sympathy. She is one of the few surviving 
Mahomedan countries which still retain an independent 
and autonomous existence (cheers). I should be 
sorry to see those countries stamped under foot. 
Though their faith is not our faith, yet with them we 
worship a single Deity, and we recognise that they 
pursue, and pursue with devotion, a noble and inspiring 
creed (cheers). The Mahomedan countries of the world 
are as much entitled as the Christian countries to the 
full benefits of the law of nations (cheers). With 
them equally with European people, treaties ought 
to be kept (loud cheers). And when they seek even 
through years of agony and pain to work out their own 
salvation let us at least give them every help that lies 
in our power (cheers). We of all people in the world 
ought to be most solicitous for the welfare of these 
countries, for is it not notorious that in India one of the 
main bases of the security of our rule lies in the loyalty 
and contentment of the Moslem population ? (cheers). 
Just as in India (and Syed Ameer Ali will bear me out in 
this, as will Lord Lamington, who was a successful 
Governor in India) the Mahomedan population look 
with confidence for sympathy and support to the 
British Raj, so I would like Mussulman countries and 
Governments throughout the world to feel that in 
England they have their truest and most disinterested 
friend (loud cheers)—a friend who while makmgTo~* 
encroachment upon their liberty, is prepared to lend 
every effort, and even to make sa crifices on their behalf 
(cheers). And among those Mussulman countries of 
which I am speaking, there is none to whom we ought 
to be more glad, if the opportunity presents itself to us, 
fo be sympathetic and helpful than to Persia, ' 



II 


The Speakers of the Evening were as follows:— 

“HIS MAJESTY THE KING.’’ 

THE PRESIDENT. 

(The Rt. Hon. Lord Lamington, G.C.M.G., G.CI.E.) 

“ HIS MAJESTY THE SHAH.’’ 

THE PRESIDENT. 

Reply by HIS EXCELLENCY THE PERSIAN MINISTER. 
(Mirza Mehdi Khan Mushir ul Mulk.) 

“THE PERSIA SOCIETY.” 

Professor E. G. BROWNE. 

Reply by The CHAIRMAN OF COUNCIL, 

(Sir Thomas Barclay.) 

“THE GUESTS.” 

The Rt. Hon. SYED AMEER ALI, PC. 

Reply by The Rt. Hon. The Earl CURZON OF KEDLESTON. 
G.C.M.G , G.C.I.E., P C. 

“THE PRESIDENT.” 

Mr. H. F. B. LYNCH. 


Publications of the Society . 

"The Charm of Persia,” by Sir H. Mortimer Durand, G.C.M.G., 
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“ The Literature of Persia,” by Professor E. G. Browne, M.A., M.B., 

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" The Importance of Persia,” by Mr. H. F. B. Lynch, M.A. 
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